Skift Take
Tourists plan entire trips around food with increasing frequency. This has changed the idea of a restaurant as travelers seek immersive dining experiences outside of the traditional seated dinner.
Dining is quickly becoming the main attraction for global travelers, far beyond the notion of a typical restaurant.
At Skift Forum Europe in April, Ben Liebmann, chief operating officer of Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant, and Camille Rumani, co-founder and chief operating officer of VizEat, discussed the new face of food tourism in conversation with SkiftX Editor Greg Oates.
“Rene unlocked a local cuisine that perhaps the world hasn’t seen,” said Liebmann of Noma’s noted chef, Rene Redzepi. The restaurant’s focus on local ingredients and inventive cuisine in Copenhagen has also translated into a new model as the team opened pop-up restaurants in Tokyo, Sydney, and most recently Tulum, Mexico, where $600 tickets for dinner sold out in two minutes. So while Noma is consistently lauded as one of the best restaurants in the world, it challenges the notion of “restaurant” as it becomes an outright tourist destination in cities around the world.
Similarly, VizEat is changing the notion of “dining out” while traveling, connecting tourists with locals for immersive food experiences like in-home dinners, cooking classes, and market tours. “Travelers want to know how locals live,” says Rumani. “What’s behind the door?”
You can watch the full discussion below.
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Read more coverage of Skift Forum Europe 2017.
At this year’s inaugural Skift Forum Europe in London, travel leaders from around the world gathered for a days of inspiration, information, and conversation on the future of travel.
Visit our Skift Global Forum site for more details about 2017 events, including our New York City event September 26-27.
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Tags: food and drink, food tourism, noma, Skift Forum Europe - 2017